Why your email address may be driving away customers

A lot of small businesses, even if they have a decent website, opt to keep their old, personal, generic-domain email address e.g., busyenterprises@gmail.com, busyenterprises23@yahoo.com (domain is the part that appears after the “@” symbol).

Trust and Professionalism

Instead,you should get an email address that uses your website domain e.g.support@busyenterprises.com, where busyenterprises.com is the business domain. But why go to the hassle of changing your email? As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it—right?

Trust and Credibility

It may actually be more “broke” than you think. Let’s say you’re planning a wedding and you want some tasty food treats for your guests and you end up at the website www.rosecatering.co.ke. You’re impressed with their site, so now it’s time to get in contact with them. Which would you rather deal with—

rosedoe88@gmail.com or rosedoe@rosecatering.co.ke ?

Boosting Customer Engagement and Sales

The second one, right? It all hinges on trust. The personal email address will lead to potential customers to start second-guessing: Is this business legitimate? Can I trust them to deliver?? Wedding catering is not something you want to take a risk on. On the other hand, the address with a business domain conveys professionalism, reassuring a potential customer that this is an honest, established business they can rely on.

Survey Results and Implications

I’m not making this up. Google surveyed businesses that started out life with a personal email address who then switched to an address with a business domain later on. 60% of these businesses reported an increase in customer engagement and 42% reported an increase in sales as a result. That’s a massive result for something as seemingly minor as changing the words after the “@” symbol. But that’s because, in actual fact, it’s not minor—the domain instills trust.

At Softlink Options, we sometimes find customers with well designed website but still holding on to their old email address. But if you care about building trust, boosting customer engagement and, ultimately, selling more, then the writing is on the wall: it’s time to let go of the old email address and upgrade to one that uses your domain name.Get your email address registered